One of the goals of reservoir monitoring in the oil and gas industry is to distinguish what well fluids are produced where in the well, and at what rate. With this information in hand the reservoir engineer can select different strategies for managing the production from the reservoir with respect to downstream issues (e.g. separation, precipitation, blending or production allocation) and upstream management of the reservoir (e.g. deferred production, injection well strategies etc.).
At present few if any methods exist for continuous monitoring of production rates and quality from different parts of a well.